Does an environmental Kuznets curve for waste pollution exist in China?

China is an emerging and leading world economy. The pace of economic change has been tremendously rapid since the beginning of economic reforms. Despite the importance of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) and environmental problems in China, no previous study has tested the EKC in China because of the difficulty in obtaining data and the need to adjust the data. The focus of this paper is to test the EKC in China using province level data over the period 1992-2003. This study applies non-parametric techniques to estimate the relationship between income and the environmental quality of wastewater, air pollution and solid waste. Copyright © 2009 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

How to plan and implement an environmental education program for a conservation area : lessons from Australia and Borneo

The Augo Wetland Forest Park, along with other conservation areas around the world, provides an opportunity for a personal connection with the natural world - an opportunity for creating ways to convince people to reverse the degradation of the planet. In this presentation I use the settings approach, as used by the World Health Organisation in health promotion, as a framework. The WHO’s 1986 Ottawa Charter states that "Health is created and lived by people within the settings of their everyday life; where they learn, work, play, and love." I argue that, similarly, a conservation area provides a setting for people to connect with environmental issues and can be the place where positive behaviours and actions for the environment are created and enacted. In a wired and virtual world, such settings may be the only opportunity some people, especially children, get to connect with the environment. An evidence-based, intentionally designed and implemented environmental education program enhances the opportunities for the personal connection and subsequent action. Planning and implementing an Environmental education program for a conservation area requires an understanding of the principles of three domains: • Environmental Communication • Environmental Education • Environmental Interpretation In this presentation I define these domains and demonstrate how they become interdependent within the context of a particular setting such as a conservation area. I outline the principles of each domain and demonstrate how they can be enacted with reference to environmental education program case studies from settings in Australia and Borneo. The first case study is based around a proposal for a planned residential community at Eden’s Crossing, in Brisbane’s high growth Western corridor. The setting featured a number of important natural and heritage conservation characteristics and the developer wanted to be pro-active in informing the market what this development aims to achieve in terms of innovative community and environmental objectives. By designing an education and interpretation program in line with best practice education and interpretation principles the developers would be assisted in their efforts to build community, preserve heritage, and facilitate environmentally sensitive lifestyles for the future residents of Eden’s Crossing. Above all, the strategy focused on advancing sustainability in a way that made the Eden’s Crossing greenfield development significantly greener. It did this by interacting with prospective purchasers, and building knowledge about sustainability with a view to shaping the future community of Eden’s Crossing in terms of attitudes and behaviours. The second case study is based around the development of the Rainforest Interpretation Centre (RIC), now renamed the Rainforest Discovery Centre, an environmental education facility managed by the Sabah Forestry Department (SFD) and located at the edge of the Kabili-Sepilok Forest Reserve in the East Malaysian state of Sabah (Borneo). This setting is of paramount importance for biodiversity conservation and research and a vital habitat for orang utan. As an Environmental Education Consultant I was tasked with developing an environmental education program for this setting as part of the SFD’s long- term strategy towards sustainable forest management. By employing the principles of Environmental Education and Environmental Interpretation I designed and implemented a program with three major components: • an environmental education component for visiting primary and secondary school groups. • an environmental education component for in-service and pre-service teachers and teacher educators. • a public awareness and environmental interpretation component which caters for the general public and tourists. From these modest beginnings the program has expanded and new facilities have been developed to meet the demands of visitors, teachers and students. The effectiveness of the program can be traced back to the grounding in the principles of best practice environmental education, communication and interpretation.

Environmental crime, human rights and green criminology

This chapter is concerned with the prospects for a safe and sustainable environment in a fair and just world. At present, these prospects look bleak. However there are a number of legal developments and ethical principles on which to build, including the European Convention on the Protection of the Environment through Criminal Law, notions of environmental, ecological and species justice, and conceptions of human rights. The chapter considers these in five sections: first providing an overview and exploring the links between human rights and environmental issues; then examining examples of environmental crimes / harms and attempts to regulate or criminalise these; before outlining the development of a Green Criminology and proposals for an international law against ecocide as a framework for addressing this range of challenges. Finally, concluding comments draw attention to debates and directions for discussion and research.

Implementing a context-based environmental science unit in the middle years: Teaching and learning at the creek

Engaging middle-school students in science continues to be a challenge in Australian schools. One initiative that has been tried in the senior years but is a more recent development in the middle years is the context-based approach. In this ethnographic study, we researched the teaching and learning transactions that occurred in one 9th grade science class studying a context-based Environmental Science unit that included visits to the local creek for 11 weeks. Data were derived from field notes, audio and video recorded conversations, interviews, student journals and classroom documents with a particular focus on two selected groups of students. This paper presents two assertions that highlight pedagogical approaches that contributed to learning. Firstly, spontaneous teaching episodes created opportunities for in-the-moment questioning by the teacher that led to students’ awareness of environmental issues and the scientific method; secondly, group work using flip cameras afforded opportunities for students to connect the science concepts with the context. Furthermore, students reported positively about the unit and expressed their appreciation for the opportunity to visit the creek frequently. This findings from this study should encourage teachers to take students into the real-world field for valuable teaching and learning experiences that are not available in the formal classroom.

Socio-environmental impact of idol immersion: dimensions and directions

India possesses a diverse and rich cultural heritage and is renowned as a 'land of festivals'. These festivals attract massive community involvement paving way to new materials such as 'Plaster of Paris' being used for 'modernizing' the representation of idols with very little thought given to the issues of toxicity and environmental impacts. Another dimension to the whole issue is the plight of the artisans and the workers involved in the trade. Owing to the unorganized nature of the industry there is minimal or no guidelines pertaining-to the worker safety and health risks of the people involved. This paper attempts to address the complexities of the inherent hazards as a consequence of these socio-environmental issues and trace the scientific rationale in addressing them in a practical and pragmatic way.

Do stakeholders or social obligations drive corporate social and environmental responsibility reporting? Managerial views from a developing country

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to explore senior managers’ perception and motivations of corporate social and environmental responsibility (CSER) reporting in the context of a developing country, Bangladesh. Design/methodology/approach – In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 25 senior managers of companies listed on the Dhaka Stock Exchange. Publicly available annual reports of these companies were also analysed. Findings – The results indicate that senior managers perceive CSER reporting as a social obligation. The study finds that the managers focus mostly on child labour, human resources/rights, responsible products/services, health education, sports and community engagement activities as part of the social obligations. Interviewees identify a lack of a regulatory framework along with socio-cultural and religious factors as contributing to the low level of disclosures. These findings suggest that CSER reporting is not merely stakeholder-driven, but rather country-specific social and environmental issues play an important role in relation to CSER reporting practices. Research limitations/implications – This paper contributes to engagement-based studies by focussing on CSER reporting practices in developing countries and are useful for academics, practitioners and policymakers in understanding the reasons behind CSER reporting in developing countries. Originality/value – This paper addresses a literature “gap” in the empirical study of CSER reporting in a developing country, such as Bangladesh. This study fills a gap in the existing literature to understand managers’ motivations for CSER reporting in a developing country context. Managerial perceptions on CSER issues are largely unexplored in developing countries.

Social and environmental reporting practices of organisations operating in, or sourcing products from, a developing country : evidence from Bangladesh

This research consists of a broad study in three parts of the social and environmental reporting practices of organisations operating in or sourcing products from a developing country, in this case Bangladesh. The first part of this study explores the social and environmental disclosure practices of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), the body responsible for organising the activities of 4,200 entities involved in the export of garments from Bangladesh. By way of interview, this part documents the opinions of numerous senior executives from the BGMEA with regard to any changes in the degree of social and environmental pressures since 1985. Utilising a complementary theoretical perspective that includes legitimacy theory, stakeholder theory and institutional theory this part then performs an analysis of the BGMEA's annual reports (1987-2005), t o explore the link between the perceived pressures and changes entailed therein and the social and environmental disclosure practices of the BGMEA across the period of analysis. The results show that the disclosure practices of BGMEA appear to be directly driven by the changing expectations of multinational buying companies- the group deemed to be the most powerful stakeholder group. This section is the first known study to interview managers from a large organisation in a developing country about shifting stakeholder expectations and then to link these changing expectations to annual report disclosures across an extended period of analysis. The findings then directly lead to the second major part of this thesis which investigates the social and environmental disclosure practices of two major multinational buying companies: Nike and H&M. Adopting a joint consideration of legitimacy theory and media agenda setting theory, this second part investigates the linkage between negative media attention and positive corporate social and environmental disclosures over a 19 year period. The results support the view that for those industry-related social and environmental issues that attract the greatest amount of negative media attention, these companies react by providing positive social and environmental disclosures. The results were particularly significant in relation to labour practices in developing countries-the issue that attracts the greatest amount of negative media attention for the companies in question. While the second part demonstrates that the media influences particular disclosure practices, the third part of the thesis shows what drives the media. Based on the speculation provided in the second part, the third part tests the proposition that the media is an important ally of NGOs in their quest to influence change in corporate accountabilities. Through the use of interviews, the results of this part of the study provide evidence to support previously untested perspectives about NGOs' utilisation of the m edia. The results reveal that NGOs use the media because the media is responsible for creating real changes in the operations and disclosure policies of organisations sourcing products from Bangladesh. The various pressures impacting the activities of organisations operating in or sourcing products from developing countries constitutes a fascinating area of investigation, and it is hoped that this study will motivate further research in this area.

Perceptions of priority issues in the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystems in India

We report on the results of a country-wide survey of people's perceptions of issues relating to the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystems in India. Our survey, mainly conducted online, yielded 572 respondents, mostly among educated, urban and sub-urban citizens interested in ecological and environmental issues. 3160 ``raw'' questions generated by the survey were iteratively processed by a group of ecologists, environmental and conservation scientists to produce the primary result of this study: a summarized list of 152 priority questions for the conservation of India's biodiversity and ecosystems, which range across 17 broad thematic classes. Of these, three thematic classes-''Policy and Governance'', ``Biodiversity and Endangered Species'' and ``Protection and Conservation''-accounted for the largest number of questions. A comparative analysis of the results of this study with those from similar studies in other regions brought out interesting regional differences in the thematic classes of questions that were emphasized and suggest that local context plays a large role in determining emergent themes. We believe that the ready list of priority issues generated by this study can be a useful guiding framework for conservation practitioners, researchers, citizens, policy makers and funders to focus their resources and efforts in India's conservation research, action and funding landscape. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Environmental Mechanics Research in China

By recalling mankind's path during past 50 years in the present article, we mainly highlight the significance of environmental issues today. In particular, two major factors leading to environment deterioration in China such as water resources and coal burning are stressed on. Present-day environmental issues are obviously interdisciplinary, of multiple scales and multi-composition in nature. Therefore, a process-based approach for environment research is absolutely necessarily. A series of sub-processes, either physical, chemical or biological, are subsequently analyzed in order to established reasonable parameterization scheme and credible comprehensive model. And we are now in a position to answer questions still open to us, improve existing somewhat empirical engineering approaches and enhance quantitative accuracy in prediction. To illustrate this process-based research approach, three typical examples associated with the Yangtze River Estuary, Loess Plateau and Tenggeli Desert environments have been dealt with respectively. A theoretical model of vertical flow field accounting for runoff and tide interaction has been established to delineate salinity and sediment motion which are responsible for the formation of mouth bar at the outlet and the ecological evolution there. A kinematic wave theory combined with the revised Green-Ampt infiltration formula is applied to the prediction of runoff generation and erosion in three types of erosion region on the Loess Plateau. Three approaches describing water motion in SPAC system in arid areas at different levels have been improved by introducing vegetation sub-models. However, we have found that the formation of a dry sandy layer and biological crust skin are additional primary causes leading to deterioration of water supply and succession of ecological system.

Environmental priorities in strategic product development

This paper reports some results from a major research project on the integration of environmental issues into design in the electrical and electronic industry. Product development practice and ecodesign methods were examined along with qualitative data from 19 manufacturers, using interviews and an action research methodology. A four-stage framework for ecodesign practice resulted: first, to make an environmental assessment from a life cycle viewpoint; then to communicate the analysis and collect feedback; thirdly to prioritize the environmental issues and finally to complete the design using relevant tools and methods. This 'ARPI' framework (analyse, report, prioritize, improve) applies to both strategic and operational levels. Initial testing of the framework in collaborating companies highlighted difficulties with communication with design teams; the role of 'ecodesign champions' is explained. Other challenges are the development of customized tools and the training of designers. The study concludes that the prioritization step is critical, as it simplifies and clarifies the tasks in design that take place after formulation of the specification. Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley and Sons, Ltd. and ERP Environment.

Impact of postponement on transportation: An environmental perspective

Yang, Ying, Yang, Biao, and Wijngaard, Jacob, ' Impact of postponement on transportation: An environmental perspective', International Journal of Logistics Management (2005) 16(2) pp.192-204 RAE2008

A MEMETIC/PARTICIPATORY APPROACH FOR CHANGING SOCIAL BEHAVIORS AND PROMOTING ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP IN JALISCO, MEXICO

This dissertation addressed the issue of sustainable development at the level of individual behaviors. Environmental perceptions were obtained from people living around the biosphere reserve Chamela-Cuixmala in Jalisco, Mexico. Several environmental issues were identified by the people, such as garbage and grey water on the streets, burning plastics, and the lack of usage of recreational areas. All these issues could be addressed with a change in behavior by the villagers. Familiarization activities were conducted to gain people's trust in order to conduct a community forum. These activities included giving talks to school children and organizing workshops. Four different methodologies were generated using memetics and participation to test which would ameliorate those environmental issues identified by the people through a change in behavior. The methodologies were 1) Memes; 2) Participation and Memes; 3) Participation; 4) Neither Participation nor Memes. A meme is an idea expressed within a linguistic structure or architecture that provides it with self-disseminating and self-protecting characteristics within and among the minds of individuals congruent with their values, beliefs and filters. Four villages were chosen as the treatments, and one as the control, for a total of five experimental villages. A different behavior was addressed in each treatment village (garbage, grey-water, burning plastics, recreation.) A nonequivalent control-group design was established. A pretest was conducted in all five villages; the methodologies were tested in the four treatment villages; a posttest was conducted on the five villages. The pretest and posttest consisted in measuring sensory specific indicators which are manifestations of behavior that can either be seen, smelled, touched, heard or tasted. Statistically significant differences in behavior from the control were found for two of the methodologies 1) Memes (p=0.0403) and 2) Participation and Memes (p=0.0064). For the methodologies of 3) Participation alone and 4) Neither, the differences were not significant (p=0.8827, p=0.5627 respectively). When using memes, people's behavior improved when compared to the control. Participation alone did not generate a significant difference. Participation aided in the generation of the memes. Memetics is a tool that can be used to establish a linkage between human behavior and ecological health.

Prospect for EPM application to environmental technology

EPM seems to have good prospects for the future not only in the materials processing but also in environmental technologies by the help of superior features like contactless processing, clean heating and melting, and good controllability. In the present paper, the authors commentate on the possibility of EPM to avoid environmental issues of energy, resources and hazardous wastes by the use of the functions of Lorentz force and Joule heating. Firstly, the present situation and future trend of electric power generation is outlined, and then some examples of the application of EPM to environmental technologies are introduced, which have been performed by the author’s group. Examples are as follows: production of spherical solar cell from a liquid jet by using intermittent electromagnetic force; fabrication of semi-solid Al-Si slurry for die-casting of vehicle-parts to reduce the weight of vehicle; electromagnetic separation of nonmetallic inclusions from liquid Al scrap and its application to the fabrication of partially particle-reinforced aluminum alloy; electromagnetic melting of hazardous wastes from power plants to stabilize wastes in glass state.

High Level Environmental Screening Study for Offshore Wind Farm Developments – Marine Habitats and Species Project

High level environmental screening study for offshore wind farm developments – marine habitats and species This report provides an awareness of the environmental issues related to marine habitats and species for developers and regulators of offshore wind farms. The information is also relevant to other offshore renewable energy developments. The marine habitats and species considered are those associated with the seabed, seabirds, and sea mammals. The report concludes that the following key ecological issues should be considered in the environmental assessment of offshore wind farms developments: • likely changes in benthic communities within the affected area and resultant indirect impacts on fish, populations and their predators such as seabirds and sea mammals; • potential changes to the hydrography and wave climate over a wide area, and potential changes to coastal processes and the ecology of the region; • likely effects on spawning or nursery areas of commercially important fish and shellfish species; • likely effects on mating and social behaviour in sea mammals, including migration routes; • likely effects on feeding water birds, seal pupping sites and damage of sensitive or important intertidal sites where cables come onshore; • potential displacement of fish, seabird and sea mammals from preferred habitats; • potential effects on species and habitats of marine natural heritage importance; • potential cumulative effects on seabirds, due to displacement of flight paths, and any mortality from bird strike, especially in sensitive rare or scarce species; • possible effects of electromagnetic fields on feeding behaviour and migration, especially in sharks and rays, and • potential marine conservation and biodiversity benefits of offshore wind farm developments as artificial reefs and 'no-take' zones. The report provides an especially detailed assessment of likely sensitivity of seabed species and habitats in the proposed development areas. Although sensitive to some of the factors created by wind farm developments, they mainly have a high recovery potential. The way in which survey data can be linked to Marine Life Information Network (MarLIN) sensitivity assessments to produce maps of sensitivity to factors is demonstrated. Assessing change to marine habitats and species as a result of wind farm developments has to take account of the natural variability of marine habitats, which might be high especially in shallow sediment biotopes. There are several reasons for such changes but physical disturbance of habitats and short-term climatic variability are likely to be especially important. Wind farm structures themselves will attract marine species including those that are attached to the towers and scour protection, fish that associate with offshore structures, and sea birds (especially sea duck) that may find food and shelter there. Nature conservation designations especially relevant to areas where wind farm might be developed are described and the larger areas are mapped. There are few designated sites that extend offshore to where wind farms are likely to be developed. However, cable routes and landfalls may especially impinge on designated sites. The criteria that have been developed to assess the likely marine natural heritage importance of a location or of the habitats and species that occur there can be applied to survey information to assess whether or not there is anything of particular marine natural heritage importance in a development area. A decision tree is presented that can be used to apply ‘duty of care’ principles to any proposed development. The potential ‘gains’ for the local environment are explored. Wind farms will enhance the biodiversity of areas, could act as refugia for fish, and could be developed in a way that encourages enhancement of fish stocks including shellfish.

The Cuban school as a context for a proper development of the environmental perception

Environmental Psychology in Cuba is a new discipline that promotes a historical and cultural vision of mankind. Perception is one of the distinct processes that creates environmental consciousness. Depending on the perception of the environment, individuals interact with it, and vice versa. It means that a good perception of the significant elements of the environment also contributes to the formation of an environmental consciousness, in which perception is one of the main processes. In this transformation the school is one of the most important places for creating knowledge, skills, habits, and good attitudes towards the environment. As a result, the evaluation of the environmental perception development in students allows detecting weaknesses in the environmental education and proposing solutions based on specific problems. This study is based on different researches where the subjects were Cuban students from different educational levels and provides a first approach to the dynamic of the environmental perception development in these individuals. Recent researches have used some dimensions of the environment concept as development indicators: material, relational, intrapersonal, behavioural, cognitive, natural or ecological, and cultural. Generally speaking, different investigations show that school is the right context for environmental education.